PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF DOORSTOP, CYPRUS COMMUNITY CLUB OF NSW, SYDNEY
12 MARCH 1989
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, when do you hope to have these
immigration policies up and running?
PM: Which immigration policies?
JOURNALIST: These new ones that you mentioned today, these
multicultural PM: I didn't mention any new immigration policy. What I
said was there was a National Agenda for multicultural
Policies and we've established the Committee which has
brought in the preliminary report. That's now being further
analysed and we'll give further consideration to that
program during this year with the full involvement of the
representatives of the various ethnic communities in the
country.
JOURNALIST: In Canberra today Dr Hewson says that the
opposition when in government will introduce a consumption
tax. What's your reaction to that?
PM: There's two things that are interesting, three things
are interesting about Dr Hewson's intereview this morning.
Firstly, the promise yet again that they're going to detail,
give details of the cuts in expenditure. As soon as we've
brought down our April statement he unequivocally committed
the opposition to bringing down details of their cuts. Now
we've all been longing and waiting to hear what it is
they're going to cut. Is it education, roads, defence? The
obligation is on them now to tell the Australian community
where those cuts are going to come. That's the first
interesting point. The second you raised that he's
obviously made it clear to the Australian people that a
consumption tax is on the agenda as far as the Liberals are
concerned. The third is obviously the gulf that exists
between various factions in the Opposition. He's saying
there'll be the cuts but there are other noises that are
being made, we won't necessarily tell you at all what we're
going to do. We'll let you go up to an election without any
details of what we stand for as opposition. The final
comment therefore to make about all those things when you
consider the points I've made is what Dr Hewson is talking
about is fairy land stuff, what they would do in government.
-2-
They haven't got the guts, the competence, the wit, the
intelligence to get a policy together and they've had
six years. They're still as far away as ever and that's why
he's talking totally hypothetically, totally fairy land.
They will not be getting into government.
ends